It’s more than a little bit ironic that the decade that began with the commercial single seemingly gasping its last dying breath would end with it being the dominating format. Tellingly, Billboard placed the invention of the iPod—the King of iPop, if you will—above the death of Michael Jackson on its list of the Top 50 Moments of the Decade: The ever-evolving gadget revolutionized the way we consume and listen to music. Some of us still cling to the album as an art form, and next week we’ll unveil our list of 100 reasons why the long-player is still vital, but the single is as relevant today as it was when Billboard used to track jukeboxes. Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together”—which, according to the industry Bible, was the decade’s biggest single—is a testament to the enduring power of the radio hit: “Come-back, come-back” went the prophetic background hook. The decade saw its share of one-hit wonders (Daniel Powter, Soulja Boy Tell ’Em, Blu Cantrell), novelty hits (Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?”), and novelty hits by one-hit wonders (again, Baha Men), and Jay-Z gave Kanye West a run for his money when it came to guest-rapper ubiquity. In fact, Jay’s number of appearances on this list is second only to Missy Elliott, who is, impressively, the main artist on all five of her singles here. Put simply: hip-hop dominated. And everyone secretly fancied themselves a disco star. Sal Cinquemani

Editor’s Note: Head on over to The House Next Door to see # 101 – 250.

100. M.I.A., “Sunshowers”

I first heard M.I.A.’s “Sunshowers” at, of all places, a Matthew Williamson fashion show. A runway is not the venue you expect to hear about gun culture, the Iraq War, the PLO, snipers, racial profiling, and sweatshops, but those are just some of the topics that M.I.A. managed to squeeze into the three-minute sophomore single from her debut album Arular. That and a sunshiny pop hook lifted from Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band’s oft-sampled disco hit “Sunshower” Cinquemani

99. Arcade Fire, “Keep the Car Running”

If his spill at the Super Bowl halftime show and the entirety of Working on a Dream suggest that it might be time to put Bruce Springsteen out to pasture, “Keep the Car Running” suggests that he may have unlikely successors in the kids of Arcade Fire. With its slowly escalating backbeat and its singular mandolin riff, combined with a naked desire to escape from unspecified traps and its on-the-verge narrative, the single is one of the decade’s finest examples of Americana without the self-seriousness or monotony that tag implies. Jonathan Keefe

98. Ciara, “Like a Boy”

With synthesized strings lifted from Vivaldi and a chorus that glides as slickly as a boy sneaking under his girlfriend’s bedcovers at dawn, Ciara’s role-reversing “Like a Boy” might be the sexiest revenge fantasy ever. Though her voice is pitched down like a serial killer in a horror film (“What, you mad? Can’t handle that?”), she ultimately plays a superhero—only she dons a pair of boy jeans instead of a cape. Cinquemani

97. The Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name”

It makes a certain kind of warped sense that the decade’s most unlikely, slowest-burning hit (it cracked the U.S. Top 40 more than a year after it entered the U.K. singles chart) would be a swinging, shouty, danceable, shoegazy feminist anthem, the illegitimate daughter of Toni Basil and My Bloody Valentine. Why not? In a decade when music could hopscotch across the Internet, bypassing actual markets and traditional taste arbiters, musicians could chart a path to chart success through blogs and word of mouth and a prayer, and this song’s type of strange novelty became even more of a strength. Really, the surprise is that no one has licensed it to become a cheer routine on Glee or a commercial for hairspray yet. Dave Hughes

96. Gorillaz, “Eastwood”

Within the brief window when the Gorillaz’s cartoon faux-anonymity didn’t seem like a silly gimmick, also came their most lasting contribution, a delirious meeting between Damon Albarn’s plaintive yarl and Del the Funky Homosapien’s chunky verses, which butt up against each other atop a tangled landscape of thick-sliced bass and minor-chord piano. Jesse Cataldo

95. Ludacris, “Rollout (My Business)”

When Ludacris crossed over by making mock of those asking him, “Who’s your housekeeper? What you keep in that house?,” I hadn’t laughed so hard since Destiny’s Child’s cover of Samantha Sang’s “Emotion” A novelty song disguised as a diss track, or vice-versa, “Rollout (My Business)” is an aural circus, in which Timbaland’s lumbering calypso riffs match perfectly with Luda’s pitch-vague slant rhymes. It takes a true cracked genius to pair “diamonds in it” with “windows tinted” And I know I’m not the only one who spent most of the decade trying to figure out what he got in that case. Eric Henderson

94. Bat for Lashes, “Daniel”

Bat for Lashes a.k.a. Natasha Khan’s love-torn “Daniel,” from her impressive sophomore effort Two Suns, features all of the singer-songwriter’s dramatic charm to which we had grown accustomed, but it’s delivered in a decidedly sleeker, more accessible, and simultaneously modern and retro new-new wave package that would be as equally at home blasting from a boombox in the mid-‘80s as it would playing over the “marble movie skies” of some late 21st-century film’s ending credits. Cinquemani

93. Coldplay, “Clocks”

Name your children Apple and Moses and you cop to having Miranda Julyism. This is not unlike Coldplay’s distinctly English and unquestionably vanilla music, so unthreatening but intriguingly teasing at times—asking for trouble without ever really causing it. On “Clocks,” the band’s finest song, Chris Martin’s grandiose sincerity of feeling gives the grade-school lyrics a haunting import, an impression amplified by the unforgettably heart-racing piano riff of the song’s sterling soundscape. Like swimming in a dream you’d never have, but a dream worth swimming in nonetheless. Ed Gonzalez

92. The Streets, “Weak Become Heroes”

This tune probably reminds a lot of people of their first E. At once a pitch-perfect evocation of rave nostalgia (that looping piano, those warm ascending pads, the stuttering vocal sample) and an unsentimental acknowledgment that the communal joy of a rave, and of raving as a lifestyle, is both beautiful and fleeting, it’s a sort of joyous hangover. Mike Skinner’s sober, steady, insightful reflection is in itself a kind of rejoinder to the sorts of laws he fingers in his conclusion’s still bracingly abrupt return to conscious reality. Hughes

91. Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”

Some of the most talented remixers of the late aughties took aim at this song. Calvin Harris stripped out the disco and upped the amperage, juicing the riffs onto the world’s more angular dance floors. Holy Ghost! took things the other way, easing the beat and sprawling across it languorous saxophone and hypnotic piano. Aeroplane excelled just by setting all their phasers on “drama” and pressing play. But while there were many worthy challengers, there could be only one—and ultimately, to Cut Copy’s credit, no one managed to surpass their original’s unlikely collision of windswept post-punk drama and ass-shaking freestyle sass. Hughes

90. Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”

The great thing about the Arctic Monkeys is how effectively they get away with being gigantic dorks. Their riffs are huge and they keep everything so speedy and detailed and frenetic that it can take your average listener quite a few spins to notice Alex Turner’s relentlessly articulate lyrics. This song drove the Monkeys’s first LP to become the fastest-selling debut in British history, and on the one hand, it’s easy to understand why it was so popular: It was brand new and it already sounded like classic rock. On the other hand, in an age of grunting, it’s encouraging that a song containing the Costello-esque lines “Your shoulders are frozen/Cold as a nun/But you’re an explosion/You’re dynamite” appealed so broadly. Hughes

89. Panda Bear, “Bros”

With its cavalcade of overlapping, largely random sound effects, this 12-minute doodle conjures an outlandish mood: Consider the one, of only four, lyrics repeated endlessly throughout (“Try and give me the space I need”), and you have a man taking a bit of a breather, hanging out by the side of a snowy country road with his bro, peering at roller coasters and shooting stars, the sounds of a woman laughing, or giving birth, in the distance. The song’s beautiful sadness derives from its contemplation of life as something you either partake in or allow to pass you by. Gonzalez

88. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero”

They’re hardly the first band to look to the disco era for inspiration after backing themselves into a corner, but Yeah Yeah Yeahs were arguably the only band to do anything substantive with that inspiration. The way Karen O sneers and vamps her way through the hook on “Zero” puts to rest any lingering doubts that she’s the finest frontwoman since Chrissie Hynde, but it’s the song’s explosive middle eight that transforms the single: Divide by zero and you approach infinity, and that’s exactly what the song does. Keefe

87. Jamie Lidell, “Multiply”

Soul had a paltry presence during the last decade, mostly relegated to affected touches on other songs, inspiration for Justin Timberlake, American Idol performances, or the occasional pop hook. You know things have changed in the genre when one of the best entries of the decade, maybe the most lasting after D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” came from a slight, bespectacled Englishman, whose dapper sense of style and knowledge of what makes a good soul song made “Multiply” effective while pushing across a different brand of innate cool. Cataldo

86. Kanye West, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”

Too-obvious samples are one of Kanye West’s biggest weaknesses, but he makes a wise choice by borrowing from what’s probably the best James Bond theme for “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” And though his handling of political themes is invariably clumsy, his mastery at transposing first-world guilt into the personal sphere, an offensively clumsy move which forces brutally procured diamonds to occupy the same remorse-ridden sphere as all of his other vices, makes this a great track in spite of itself, one of his most lasting, remarkably flawed experiments. Cataldo

85. The Pipettes, “Pull Shapes”

In the ‘90s, for a while, it was fashionable to believe that history had ended—that the game of ideopolitical musical chairs had ended, with democratic capitalism in the winner’s chair. Though the 21st century soon disabused people of this notion, in some ways this stealth mashup validates the hypothesis. Here we have a post-feminist-yet-still-Svengali’d girl group leading pretty boys into a dizzily exuberant Motown stomp. “I like to disco,” they sing as strings ascend. “I like to rock n’ roll,” and a riff skronks in. “I like to hip-hop,” and a turntablist cuts. In a post-everything jumble of a decade, when we danced to nearly everything, this was one of the best dances. Hughes

84. The Knife, “Silent Shout”

Pac-Man and his red-bowed honey’s wedding song? The metronomic production—minimalist but intense beats chasing each other as if in and out of love, or nightmares—is perfectly and surreally married to the equally disquieting lyrics, which recount a flashpoint in a person’s life when their sense of complacency is shattered by a dream of falling teeth. Is that love or death on their horizon? Like much of the Knife and Fever Ray’s music, or a Luis Buñuel film, the song seduces as it frightens. Gonzalez

83. Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”

Queens of the Stone Age may sometimes come off like just another rock group that spends most of their free time tuning their guitars to their Y chromosomes, but make no mistake, their punchy hit “No One Knows” is the pom-pom pumping “My Sharona” of the 2000s. Buttressed by some callisthenic drum-set spasms courtesy of Dave Grohl and a surly, nine-foot-high wall of guitar riffs, ginger thug Josh Homme spins his best guess at a sonnet, but it comes out more like a roaring “Best of My Love” The results: oddly touching. Henderson

82. Missy Elliott f/ Eve, “4 My People”

Any of Miss E…So Addictive’s succulent uppers could have made this list (namely, the retro disco boogie of “Old School Joint” and the Cybotron-meets-He-Man angst of “Whatcha Gon’ Do”), but “4 My People” is still my favorite trip. The way Missy’s rhythmic vocal rides Timbaland’s stringy trance (which recalls the signature bassline from DJ Garth and E.T.I.’s “20 Minutes of Disco Glory”) stirs up a hallucination of the singer actually riding Timbaland through the club, whipping her Ecstasy People as they throw space dust over her (and Eve’s) head. Gonzalez

81. R. Kelly, “Ignition (Remix)”

Less a remix than a repair job, R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” keeps the uneasy shuffle beat of the original but changes everything else, turning a one-note sex metaphor into something far better, a slyly perverse after-club romp, one of the only songs in memory where the announcement that this is a remix is the catchiest part of the hook. This is Kelly at his creepy best: unapologetic, drenched in sleazy innuendo, with little-to-no idea of how odd it all seems. Cataldo

Interview: Jia Zhang-ke on Ash Is Purest White and the Evolution of China

Unshowy yet unshakably self-assured, sincere but with glimpses of a sly sense of humor, and unhesitatingly frank even about touchy topics like the Chinese government’s censorship of his work, Jia Zhang-ke comes off in person just as a fan of his films might expect. Ever since his 1997 feature debut, The Pickpocket, and 2000’s Platform, in which young people struggle to adapt to China’s increasing Westernization, Jia has been creating a kind of unofficial history of his homeland, quietly defying his government’s determination to erase its tracks as it barrels along by doing things like rewiring the economy, rewriting the social contract, and depopulating whole cities and erecting new ones in a matter of months.

Jia’s films operate in metaphorical deep focus, surfacing the ways that these sweeping societal changes affect individual lives and relationships by zeroing in on sensitively detailed portrayals of two lovers, or of a group or pair of friends, while just as clearly portraying the socioeconomic backdrops to their stories. And often at the center of his films is Zhao Tao, his wife and longtime muse. In Jia’s latest, Ash Is Purest White, Zhao reprises the role she played in 2002’s Unknown Pleasures: Qiao Qiao, a strong-willed woman from Jia’s hometown of Fenyang, this time over a span of 17 years that starts when she’s the young lover of a gangster and ends with her in charge of the gambling den he once ran.

In a conversation before Ash Is Purest White’s debut at the New York Film Festival, Jia explained what he likes about digital video, how Zhao Tao helped bring her role to life, and how he deals with his government’s suppression of his work.

The music in your films is always an important part of the story. Can you talk about how you picked the songs for this one, starting with “Y.M.C.A.”?

Since I wanted to set the story starting in 2001, I wanted to find a piece of music that can trigger that particular era very authentically. And back in the day, in 2001, the younger generation, they didn’t have a lot of sources of entertainment. They might have had a disco club and karaoke, and that was about it. Two songs very popular at that time were “Y.M.C.A.” and “Go West” [the Pet Shop Boys song that was a motif in Jia’s Mountains May Depart].

The reason that we liked “Y.M.C.A.” was not because we understood the lyrics or understood who sang them or who was involved in the production. We had no idea what they were singing about. But we did enjoy the rhythm, the melody, and the beat, which is matching the heartbeat of the young people. It really got you going and brought up the energy of the room.

Another song that is particularly important in the film—you hear it again and again—is “Drunk for Life” by Sally Yeh, a Cantonese pop singer. This is a song I listened to when I was in junior high. At the time, young people tended to hang out in the video arcade, and this was one of the songs heard there. It was also a theme song for John Woo’s The Killer. That film, in the triad genre, is very similar to the John Woo motif that I want to evoke in this film.

The third song in this film is “How Much Love Can Be Repeated?” This sequence was actually shot 12 years ago in Three Gorges, when I made Still Life. I think the reason why I wanted to use it was that it could create this interesting contrast between what was happening on stage and Zhao’s character off stage, when you see her reaction watching this performance. Mind you, the on-stage part was shot 12 years ago, but Zhao’s part was shot last year. Hopefully, you cannot tell that these two footages were from two different times and spaces.

Was any of the other Three Gorges footage shot for Still Life, or shot when you were making that film? I know you shot a lot of documentary footage there at the time.

Only that particular clip was shot 12 years ago. The rest, we went back to the same location and tried to capture what we did in Still Life. But, unlike in other parts of the film, where we tend to use digital video, for the Three Gorges part we use film stock. That’s why it gives you a sense of nostalgia, evoking what happened in the past.

You’ve worked in digital video for a long time, partly because it allowed you to bypass processing labs, which would not have developed your films because they weren’t government-approved. Digital video also made it much easier for your films to be copied and disseminated in China when they weren’t being played in theaters. Are there also things that you prefer artistically about using digital video, especially now that it can do so much more than it could early on?

Starting in 2001, using DV to shoot Unknown Pleasures, I didn’t think of it just for practical purposes. DV as a medium has its own aesthetics that I can really explore and develop. Using DV you can create a close proximity between the camera and the actors and actresses, a kind of intimacy that cannot be done through the traditional camera.

The other thing is, things that happen unexpectedly can be easily captured with DV cameras. With cameras that use film stock, things are usually highly scripted in a contained, particular environment. With DV you tend to have a lot of spontaneity and a lot of impromptu happenstances that can be easily captured.

It’s so important for people to share their stories and learn from history. To me, one of the most important forms of disruption in China since Mao is the way people have been barred from telling their stories, or made to alter what they say to fit some official narrative. So you’re performing an important service by writing history with your films, recording the story of the present and the recent past for the people of tomorrow.

I think that’s also why I rely a lot on DV. I joke that only the pace of the evolution of DV equipment can keep up with the pace of the development of China. For me, this film is very much about how, in this time span of 17 years, human connections and human emotions—the interpersonal relationships between people—evolves and changes as a result of all that. On the surface, you can see very clearly the changes pre-internet era and post-internet era, [things like how] in the past you had slow trains and now you have high-speed trains. But that is on the surface level. What I’m interested in exploring is what happened in terms of the inner world of those people in this particular historical context, how their relationships evolved or dissolved and the reasons for the dissolutions and the evolutions of their relationships.

You’ve said you like working with your wife partly because she becomes a kind of second author of your screenplays, adding detail to what you have written. Can you give an example of what she brought to this movie?

When she was in the cabin of the boat and the lady in black [a cabinmate] came in, she just, almost as a kneejerk reaction, stood up, suddenly and immediately. She was trying to capture what it would be like for someone who has been in prison for five years, how she would have reacted to a security guard entering the jail cell and how she would react the same way when this lady in black entered her cabin.

I see her training as a dancer a lot in the physicality of her acting.

Yes. Another example would be the water bottle in this film. It was used to evoke this same character in Still Life, and she carried that water bottle there too. It makes sense because of the weather; it was very hot so she would need to drink. But the water bottle also came in handy to enhance the mood I was trying to create. Zhao Tao took this on and really went for it. She used it as a weapon, she used it as a way to stop the door from closing,

And to avoid holding hands with the man she met on the train.

Exactly. She was using this bottle as a kind of third character in the film, thinking about how this can be expanded and explored.

Your work has faced such strong resistance from the Chinese government. What is the government’s response to your films these days, and how does that affect how you work or how your films are seen?

I make films based on my own ecology, my own tempo and rhythm. I don’t really think too much about whether or not the film can be shown in China. Of course, I would love if my film could be shown in China, but that’s not the only reason why I make films. The most important thing for me is to understand that that’s not the end goal, so I don’t need to somehow sacrifice and change the way I make films in order to be shown in China.

I will make the film I want to make, and if it can be shown in China, great. If not, so be it. That’s the way I interact with this particular censorship system. But I have to say that the situation has improved in terms of the communication channels. Those have opened up a lot more, so after I finish the film, I will do my best as a director to communicate to the censor bureau why this film should be shown in China. That I am willing to do. But I will not compromise the quality or any subject matter.

Every Cannes Palme d’Or Winner of the 2000s Ranked

There’s a certain formula that often defines the recipients of the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious top prize, the Palme d’Or. These films, in recent years especially, tend to have a sense of importance about them (Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11), frequently due to their sociopolitical awareness of the world (Laurent Cantet’s The Class), or of specific societal ills (Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). Very occasionally, the Palme d’Or goes to a bold, experimental, and divisive vision from a well-liked auteur (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), but more often it’s awarded to a film in the lineup that the most people on the Cannes jury can probably agree is good (Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake). And in less than three months, we’ll see if Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s jury will follow any sort of predictable formula when it announces its winners.

You’ll find us on the Croisette this May, covering most of the titles in Cannes’s competition slate. Until then, enjoy our ranking of the Palme d’Or winner from the 2000s. Sam C. Mac

Editor’s Note: This entry was originally published on May 1, 2018.

19. The Son’s Room (2001)

Halfway through The Son’s Room, director Nanni Moretti shifts the rhetoric of his narrative away from an exaggerated view of happy domesticity and into a realm of weepy melodrama. Psychiatrist Giovanni (Moretti) is a perfect father and husband: he helps his daughter with her Latin homework (perducto means “without hardship you will be guided”—wink, wink); allows her boyfriend to exalt grass (when high, the boy says he’s “looking at the universe”); and initiates group lip-synching during the family’s car trips. Nicola Piovani’s score grotesquely heightens the joy behind every smile, meaning disaster is inevitable. As Moretti delves deeper into Giovanni’s work, focus is shifted away from the family arena. Though the film blooms when Paola (Laura Morante) and the family seek deliverance from their pain by connecting with a girl their deceased son, Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice), met at summer camp, Paola remains a cipher throughout. Cue Brian Eno’s “By This River,” which blares from a car radio as the family stands near the sea that killed their Andrea: “Here we are stuck by this river/You and I underneath a sky/That’s ever falling down, down, down.” In this one stoic moment, not only does the family seemingly escape their grief but also the Rob Reiner soap opera Moretti trapped them in. Ed Gonzalez

18. Fahrenheit 911 (2004)

A mediocre director but a master PR man, Michael Moore is the father of the Happy Meal documentary: big fonts, quick-fire montages, celebrity cameos, causing elaborate scenes. Fahrenheit 9/11 is no less an attention-grabbing stunt than his Bowling for Columbine, but what a scene it is. At the time of its release, Moore’s compilation of the Bush I administration’s bamboozling of the American public in the wake of 9/11. More than 10 years after its release, though, what lingers most about the film is Moore’s self-aggrandizement and forced sanctimoniousness (he rah-rahs from the sidelines when an interviewee says something he agrees with, and you sometimes get a sense that he wouldn’t call a dying man an ambulance if it meant getting the money shot of the guy croaking). At least it’s some kind of mercy that he spends very little time on screen. Gonzalez

17. Amour (2012)

There’s a deceptiveness lurking deep within Amour, an insincerity that colors the drama, recasting it as a ploy. Whereas across earlier films Michael Haneke’s predilection for deceit served a high-minded, if still somewhat suspect, intellectual purpose (an interrogation of privilege and meaning in Caché, the deconstruction of genre in both versions of Funny Games, and so on), here his disingenuous approach is not only unwarranted, but is actually at odds with the tone and tenor of the drama. This suggests two possibilities: Either Haneke has attempted to shear his sensibility of trickery and failed to do so convincingly, or he has made an experiment in manipulation and feigned empathy so exacting and oblique that nobody has understood its real purpose (I wouldn’t put the latter past him). Either way, Amour intends to dupe us, to feed on our own pain and suffering. Moved to tears or scared to death, we’d all lose our dignity in the end. Calum Marsh

16. I, Daniel Blake (2016)

English stand-up comedian Dave Johns brings the sort of spontaneous energy to his eponymous character that’s consistently made Loach’s films worth keeping up with. But Blake’s storyline veers from its emotionally grounded setup and into grandstanding displays like the Michael Moore-worthy stunt from which I, Daniel Blake takes its title. Both principal actors have a strong enough sense of their characters, even as they’re pulled into increasingly harrowing places, to make the film a more successful one than Loach’s last few, but it’s still schematic and predictable, and it aggressively stacks the deck against Blake and Kattie (Hayley Squires) in a way that makes it more effective as social activism, and less so as drama. The Loach of two or three decades ago, who made intimate, naturalistic films about the working class, like 1969’s Kes and 1994’s Ladybird Ladybird, is distinctly different from the Loach of today—and the soapbox-prone I, Daniel Blake reaffirms how unlikely it is for that to change. Mac

15. The Class (2008)

When a plot finally emerges, it’s all about the quandaries of privileging principle (and principal) or empiricism, duty or personal preference, questions that have been implicit all along, even in kids’ protests that they’re always being picked on or favored. As a clever late twist suggests, the interactions themselves are almost all riffs on Socratic debates—usually, the teacher seems to be asking students to verify their claims so he can give himself time to rebut—and as director Laurent Cantet said at The Class’s New York Film Festival press conference, the school’s a place “where democracy is at stake.” Instead of the usual righteous monologues, this is a film of dialogue and dialogues, in which the bickering teachers’ conferences begin to echo the kids’ troublemaking and skepticism but for the adults’ pretense of understanding and decorum (everyone, in any case, has their reason and handily states it in close-up). It would make a perfect, though not particularly good, double feature with Frederick Wiseman’s documentary State Legislature or Advise and Consent. David Phelps

Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked

Most of Marvel Studios’s films are the cinematic equivalent of breadcrumbs, which have been dropped into theaters strategically so as to keep one looking for the next sequel or crossover, when the endless televisual exposition will eventually, theoretically yield an event of actual consequence. Occasionally, however, a Marvel film transcends this impersonality and justifies one’s patience. Weird, stylish, and surprisingly lyrical, Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, and Doctor Strange attest to the benefits of the old Hollywood-style studio system that Marvel has resurrected: Under the umbrella of structure and quota is security, which can bequeath qualified freedom. Chuck Bowen

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 25, 2018.

21. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The aesthetic dexterity and psychological depth of Ang Lee’s Hulk is corrupted by Marvel’s “reboot” of the superhero franchise, Louis Leterrier’s intermittently kinetic but depressingly shallow The Incredible Hulk. In response to complaints that Lee’s unjustly excoriated 2003 effort was too talky and slow, Leterrier swings the pendulum to the opposite side of the spectrum, delivering a slam-bang spectacle so lacking in weight that, until the impressive finale, the film seems downright terrified of character and relationship development, as if too much conversation or—gasp!—subtextual heft will immediately alienate coveted young male fanboys. Nick Schager

20. Iron Man 2 (2010)

Upgraded with the latest CGI hardware but also more shoddy screenwriting software than its system can withstand, Iron Man 2 is an example of subtraction by addition. For a sequel designed to deliver what its predecessor did not, Jon Favreau’s follow-up to his 2008 blockbuster piles on incidents and characters it doesn’t need while still managing to skimp on the combat that should be this franchise’s bread and butter but which remains an element only trotted out at sporadic intervals and in modest portions. Schager

19. Captain Marvel (2018)

As another of the character-introducing MCU stories existing mostly to feed new superheroes into the Avengers series, Captain Marvel looks like something of a trial run. You know the drill: If the film lands with audiences, then you can count on Captain Marvel (Brie Larson)—like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and even Ant-Man before her—getting her own series. But if not, then, hey, she’s at least assured of being asked to pop by the game room at Stark Industries for a kibitz in somebody else’s franchise down the road. Based on what’s on display here, Captain Marvel could well get her own star turn again at some point, but hopefully it will be with a different crew behind the camera. Chris Barsanti

18. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

What is this, a crossover episode? After 18 films, the overlords at Marvel Studios have gathered almost all of their indentured servants, er, star-studded stable together into the ever-crashing, ever-booming, and ever-banging extravaganza Avengers: Infinity War. Whether you look at this whirling dervish and see a gleefully grandiose entertainment or a depressing exemplar of the culturally degraded present moment will depend on your investment—in all senses of that term—in Marvel’s carefully cultivated mythos. The film is all manic monotony. It’s passably numbing in the moment. And despite the hard-luck finish—something an obligatory post-credits sequence goes a long way toward neutering—it’s instantly forgettable. Strange thing to say about a film featuring Peter Dinklage as the tallest dwarf in the universe. Keith Uhlich

17. Thor (2011)

With some notable exceptions, Marvel Studios-produced films usually plateau at a glossy but totally indistinct level of mediocrity, and Thor continues the trend of weakly jumpstarting a franchise based on a Marvel comic with an adequate but instantly forgettable origin story. Kenneth Branagh’s film is reasonably well put-together, but unlike even his worst films, it has no internal life, instead feeling like an impersonal, assembly-line product. The film’s most notable feature is that it serves as a continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe set up by the Iron Man movies. Characters from those films pop up during Thor’s main narrative and after the end credits, living up to Marvel’s commitment to populating their films with the same bland versions of perfectly acceptable characters. While Thor is certainly competent, that’s just not enough. Simon Abrams

16. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

A spectacle of star-spangled superheroics, Captain America: The First Avenger gives sturdy big-screen treatment to Marvel’s square-jawed—and square—jingoistic military man. With Joe Johnston delivering pyrotechnical action-adventure in a period guise, à la The Rocketeer (which was similarly fixated on its female lead’s buxom chest), this costumed-crusader saga is a capable, if somewhat unremarkable, affair beset by the same origin-story shortcomings that plagued another U.S.-virtue-via-army-weaponry fable, Iron Man—namely, a bifurcated structure in which the introductory first half exceeds, in compelling drama and kick-ass thrills, the latter fight-the-baddies combat. Schager

15. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

While writer-director Joss Whedon takes considerable strides to make Avengers: Age of Ultron’s narrative feel more nuanced and personal, his few sublime scenes of expressive melodrama are drowned out by the massive amounts of exposition and backstory that make up most of the dialogue and subsequently make the film feel overworked. When the talk isn’t about the intricate plot and the characters’ mythology, it’s a whole lot of dick-centric jabs. In cases like the competition over who can pick up Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) hammer, there’s a vague sense that Whedon is in on the joke, but then there’s a plethora of other exchanges that don’t seem so tongue in cheek. The bro-isms that underscore these interpersonal relations might explain why Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff strikes up a romance with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), a.k.a. the Hulk, the only male Avenger who isn’t consistently preoccupied with the size of his…ego. The growing relationship between Romanoff and Banner is the tender heart of Age of Ultron, and Whedon clearly thrills in the cheesy but heartfelt melodrama that builds between them. Unfortunately, as the film has approximately another half-dozen or so plotlines to tend to, this section of the story barely makes up a sixth of the narrative. Chris Cabin

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